


drop it like it's hot

by Springsteen



Series: open all night [11]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:11:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7372264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Springsteen/pseuds/Springsteen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek works as a waiter. Sure, he's a little clumsy, but still, it'll be fine - until a little accident brings about a chance meeting with one fiery redhead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	drop it like it's hot

**Author's Note:**

> a fill for the prompt "great. perfect. nice. fuck this."

The thing was, Derek didn’t actually need this job. He didn’t need it the way Gloria needed her job, to pay for her bills and cover rent and buy food for her family. He didn’t need it the way Theo needed this job, scraping by on rent and living on his own in a city hundreds of miles from his family and his hometown. He didn’t even need it the way Jess needed her job, to pay for her tuition and textbooks. Derek knew he was privileged, knew he was really lucky to have parents who loved him and a nice place to stay. He wanted this job so that he’d have a little extra spending money, and also so that he wouldn’t be rattling around his empty apartment all summer long. 

Even though he didn’t need to be spending his summer waiting tables, he would still be upset if he got fired. He didn’t think he was really in danger of that - at least, not yet. At six foot two, Derek had big feet that were great for tripping over things, and long legs that were great at running into tables, and big hands that made carrying trays of food very easy. The trouble came when he tried to actually serve the food, tilting that balance and sending things sliding around. Derek had only been working as a server at Centigrade for two weeks, and he hadn’t caused any major disasters (he was really lucky no one had been walking into the kitchen when he walked through the wrong door with a full tray of plates that one time). He was making decent tips, though he suspected that might be more because of his face than his skills as a waiter. Still, he was learning. He was doing okay.

“Hi, I’m Derek, I’ll be your server today,” he said over and over. He had a good memory for faces, hasn’t messed up anyone’s order yet. Everything was fine, right up until his second weekend of work.

The restaurant was popular, busy for lunch and dinner every day, but weekends were even busier. Tables and chairs were wedged in where they could fit, leaving narrow paths for diners and waiters to walk through. He had been having a pretty good night, until he was carrying orders over to table fifteen when some guy at table eight threw his chair backwards and leapt to his feet. Derek stopped suddenly, stumbling over his own feet and fighting to keep his balance with a full tray of food held over his shoulder. Gravity won the battle, pulling Derek, the tray, and six plates of steaming food down right on top of some poor dude sitting at table eleven with a crash that brought the entire restaurant into a hushed silence.

“Oh my god I am so sorry,” Derek said, straightening up from where he’d caught himself against the guy’s chest. There was arugula and kale in his bright red hair from a salad Derek had dumped on him, the dressing stained down his pale blue shirt. He was pretty cute, which made Derek feel even worse about spilling food all over him. “I am so, so sorry.” Derek grabbed a napkin and pressed it to his shirt. The guy just stared at him.

“Great,” he said slowly, looking down at himself. He yanked the napkin from Derek’s hand, shoved his chair back from the table, and stood up. He was just as tall as Derek was, pale and freckled and flushed red with anger. “Perfect. Nice. Fuck this.” He stomped off to the bathroom, leaving Derek staring after him, broken plates and wasted food all over the floor.

“He can be a real asshole sometimes.” Derek looked up to see a guy smiling at him apologetically, silver braces glinting against his teeth. He sat across the table from the guy Derek had spilled food all over, but he managed to escape Derek’s clumsiness. 

“Sorry I ruined your date,” Derek said, crouching down to start cleaning up the mess.

The guy laughed brightly, childlike in his total delight. “Oh, Will and I aren’t dating. Well, I guess you could say this is a friend date?” He scraped the food on the table onto one of the plates. “We went to college together. We’re catching up - I guess he really likes this place? He wouldn’t stop talking about it last week.”

“Oh, shit,” Derek said. He’d probably ruined that guy’s favorite restaurant for him. He was so getting fired.

“Hey, no,” the guy said. “Will’s got a hot temper, but this was obviously an accident.” He smiled at Derek again. “I’ll try to talk some sense into him.”

Derek nodded. “Thanks. I just started a couple weeks ago, and that - it would mean a lot.” He stood up and nearly slipped on a bunch of french fries on the floor. “I’m gonna go get a mop. I can see if we can move you to a different table?” It was a Saturday evening, the restaurant was packed, and Derek could see several groups of people waiting for a table. Moving these two to a new table didn’t seem very possible.

The guy shook his head. “Nah, we’ll be okay.” He leaned closer to Derek. “This one time, in college, Will was carrying me in a piggy-back race across the quad, and he tripped, and we ran into the entire women’s volleyball team.” Derek smiled, small but genuine. Crashing into an entire volleyball team sounded painful, but not in the about-to-lose-a-job kind of way. 

Ten minutes later, with Theo’s help, Derek managed to clean up the mess he’d made, serve the table whose food he’d spilled, and was back on track. The guy - Will, apparently - walked out of the bathroom, white undershirt untucked and blue button down crushed in his fist. He exaggeratedly paused to let Derek walk past carrying two espresso cups. Derek winced.

He made it through the rest of the evening without incident, serving tables and smiling and not even spilling water when he refilled glasses. He thought his evening was turning around, until he dropped the checks off at Will’s table and overheard the conversation immediately after.

“No way,” Will said. “I’m not tipping somebody who dumped the whole kitchen all over me.”

“It was an accident,” his friend said. “Besides, the whole system of tipping waiters is so terrible. They barely get paid in the first place - do you want to just not pay him?”

“He doesn’t deserve a tip,” Will said stubbornly, and now Derek wanted to dump another tray of food all over him, this time on purpose. He glared across the restaurant at Will, who looked up to see Derek frowning at him. Will glared right back. “I’m not giving him a tip,” Will said, looking right at Derek.

“Fine, then I will,” his friend said. “You’re such a jerk, sometimes.”

“I still have salad dressing in my hair,” he said. “And it’s all that waiter’s fault.”

Derek had heard enough. He calmly walked through the kitchen to the back delivery door, out into the alley, where he kicked an empty box in front of the dumpster. Why he ever thought it would be a good idea to work in the service industry was a total mystery. He should just go back to freelance writing, or look for an editing job, or something. Anything that didn’t involve being around stupid assholes with brilliantly red hair and molten eyes and horrible beliefs about tipping people who were just having a bad day.

“That box insult your family or something?” Derek turned to see Will standing across the alley from him. Derek kicked it again for good measure. “So, Chris said I was being an asshole,” he said defiantly, like he expected Derek to instantly agree and he was ready to fight him about it. “I guess I was.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at Derek’s shoes. “Sorry.”

“Sorry I ruined your shirt,” Derek said, instead of any of the other words running through his mind - your hair looks good all messed up, you’re lucky your friend is such a great guy, I would just give you my shirt if I didn’t have two hours left on this shift. “My manager said we’d take care of dry cleaning for you.”

“Oh,” he said. He wasn’t carrying the shirt. “It’s fine. I don’t need to dry clean it.” He was closer to Derek, suddenly calm, or at least, not burning with rage the way he had been seconds ago. Derek could see the individual freckles across his nose, down his neck. He wanted to lean in and press a kiss to each one.

Derek took a deep breath. He really needed to get back to his other tables, but he didn’t want to simply let this go. He smiled spectacularly and thought, go big or go home. “Let me make it up to you,” he said. “I’ll get you dessert.”

Will frowned. “We already ate. I’m good.”

“What about coffee, then?” Derek leaned in and wiped a smudge of dressing from Will’s hairline, his fingers lingering in his hair for a second longer than necessary.

“Are you flirting with me?” Will asked accusatorily. 

“Yeah,” Derek said, hoping to hell he wasn’t about to be sucker punched. “I gotta get back to work.” He took the pen from his pocket, gently took hold of Will’s wrist, and wrote his name and phone number across the back of his hand. “Think about it?” He walked back into the kitchen, too afraid to look over his shoulder at Will.

It didn’t occur to Derek until he was nearly done with his shift, down to two tables chatting over dessert, that Will could’ve found his manager, reported him for some kind of sexual harassment, and actually cost him his job. Will was probably straight, probably hated him, would never talk to him again. Derek needed to learn to think through his actions. It was a mistake he made over and over again through his whole life.

Derek went home that night, and came back to work for the lunch shift the next day, and let himself fall into a routine. He didn’t dump any more food on people, didn’t trip across the floor, made decent money from tips. He was on his way home from work one night when his phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number. It was probably a spam message about winning a trip to Bermuda or whatever, so he left his phone in his pocket until he got home. When he read the message, he nearly dropped his phone.

_still up for that coffee ?_

Derek stared at his phone for a long time, unable to move his fingers to type out any response. This had to be Will - it wouldn’t make sense for it to be anyone else. He hadn’t given his number to anyone else in the past few days. He leaned heavily against the wall and tapped out a response.

_yeah how about friday night?_

He was really glad he’d given that shift to Gloria. He’d been planning on taking a bath and catching up on some netflix, but this could be much, much better. His phone buzzed with a reply a few seconds later.

_sounds good :)_

They decided on a coffee shop in a neighborhood not far from the restaurant, and Derek didn’t actually set an alarm on his phone, but he did smile every time he got a text from Will. Friday night couldn’t get here fast enough. For the first time in weeks, Derek sat down with his notebook and wrote poem after poem about sparks, about the fluttering butterflies in his gut and about golden eyes bright in his memory. He was too close to it to tell if the poems were any good, but it still felt good just to write them. It was a feeling he’d missed, going for weeks spending too much time at work without any real inspiration.

Normally, Derek was late for pretty much everything in his life. Friday night, though, he got to the coffee shop early and spent a lot of time pacing nervously around on the sidewalk. He projected a calm persona, but tonight he had too much energy to contain. His blood buzzed in his veins and he could’ve used a drink to take the edge off, but he also never wanted to let go of this feeling, and he definitely wanted to do this sober. He wanted to remember it, even if it all went terribly wrong.

“You’re not gonna get very far, walking in circles like that.” Derek looked up to see Will standing a few feet from him, hands shoved in his pockets, smiling teasingly. “I realised I still don’t know your name.”

“It’s Derek,” he introduced himself. “Derek Nurse.”

“Will Poindexter,” he said, holding out his hand. Instead of shaking it, Derek took his hand and laced their fingers together. Will rolled his eyes. “I think you owe me a coffee, Nurse.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s the least I can do,” he said, leading them into the coffee shop. He got coffees for himself and Will and sat down across from him at a small table in the corner, their feet nestled together under the table.

“I feel like this still doesn’t make us even,” he said. “Like, I still feel like such a dick.”

“I would spill my coffee on you,” he said, “but that would probably hurt, and I’ve heard this place has pretty good coffee. Plus, I’m not that much of a klutz.” Will picked up the sugar cannister on the table and poured sugar into his palm. He looked up at Derek and smirked at him as he raised his hand over Derek’s head, pouring the sugar on him. “Feel better about it now?”

Derek shook his head, sending bits of sugar onto his shoulders. He licked his lips. “Dunno,” he said. “I think I can still make it up to you.”

Will took a sip of coffee, looking at Derek over the rim of his mug. His gaze burned, bright and intense. “I guess we’ll figure something out.”

“Guess so,” Derek said. He smiled right back at Will and took hold of his hand, grains of sugar still clinging to his palm. He had no intention of letting go anytime soon.


End file.
